Communists
and the National Question, Part 1 (1900-1920): The debate on the national
question at the dawn of decadence

“Workers of countries, unite.” This call at the
end of the Communist Manifesto written by Marx and Engels in 1848 was not just
an exuberant exhortation; it expressed one of the most vital conditions for the
victory of the working class. From its very birth the movement of the working
class proclaimed its international class character against the national
boundaries which marked the development of the domination of the capitalist
class over the proletariat. But in the 19th century capitalism had not yet
exhausted all its potential for development in relation to pre-capitalist
production relations. At certain moments and wider certain conditions
communists took into account the possibility for the working class to support
factions of the bourgeoisie because, in developing itself, capitalism
accelerated the maturing of the conditions for the proletarian revolution.

But at the beginning of the
20th century, with the existence of a world market sanctioning the extension of
the capitalist mode of production all over the globe, a debate began on the
nature of this revolutionary support to national movements. The following article,
the first of a series devoted to the attitude of communists towards the
national question, goes back over the terms and the concerns of the debate between
Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg.

The failure of the
revolutionary wave of 1917-23, the triumph of the counter-revolution in Russia and
the 50-year subjection of the proletariat to the barbarism of decadent
capitalism did not allow for a complete clarification of the national question
in the workers’ movement. Throughout this period, the counter – revolution did
everything to distort the content of the proletarian revolution, constantly
trying to pretend that there was a continuity between the revolutionary wave of
1917-23 and the state capitalism established in Russia, a continuity between
the proletarian internationalism of the revolutionary period and the
imperialist policy of the Russian state capitalism pillaging in the name of
‘the right of self-determination of peoples’ and the ‘national liberation of
oppressed peoples’. The positions of Lenin were transformed into infallible
dogma. Thus the possibility for the proletariat to use national movements as a
‘lever’ for the communist revolution, a tactic adopted at the time of the
reflux of revolution in the key countries and the need to defend the ‘proletarian
state’ in Russia, tended to be embraced as an absolute truth in the ranks of
revolutionaries with the exception of some minorities.

Today the dispersion and the crisis of revolutionary
organisations, particularly the crisis of the Bordigist party, the ICP (Programma)
highlight the importance of communists defending a clear and principled
position on the so- called wars of ‘national liberation’ if they want to avoid
being broke under the enormous weight of bourgeoisie ideology on this crucial
point. The fact that the ICP abandoned the internationalist position in the
inter-imperialist conflict in the Middle East in order to critically support
the capitalist force of the Palestine Liberation Organisation - a position
which provoked the dislocation of the group and the birth of an openly
nationalist and chauvinist split (1) – i.e. a recent example of the danger to
the proletariat of any concession to nationalism in the period of capitalist
decadence.

The source of the theoretical weaknesses of the Bordigist
on the national question, like the whole so-called `Leninist’ tradition, lies
in their defence of Lenin’s position in the early years of the Communist
International in favour of supporting national movements under the slogan of
‘the right of self-determination of nations’. The ICC rejects all support of
this nature in the epoch of imperialism. This rejection is based on Rosa
Luxemburg’s criticism of Lenin’s ideas developed at the beginning of the
century. Today, in the light of the experiences of the proletariat in the last
60 years, we can only reaffirm that Luxemburg’s position and not Lenin’s has
been confirmed by history and offers the only clear basis for a Marxist
approach to this question.

Today there are many elements emerging in the
revolutionary milieu or at least making a partial break with leftism, who still
take Lenin’s position against Luxemburg’s on this question. Because it is so
essential to break clearly with all aspects of Leftist ideology, we are
publishing a series of articles which critically examine the debates which took
place in the revolutionary movement before and after the first imperialist
world war. We want to demonstrate why Luxemburg’s position is the only one to
deal coherently with all the implications of capitalist decadence on the
national question. We also aim to restore to memory the real position of Lenin
which was an error in the workers’ movement in the past but has been distorted
and used by the left of capital.

NOTE

(1)See
International Review 32.

LENIN ON ‘THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION’

“Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it
even of the ‘most just’, ‘purest’, most refined and civilised brand.” (Lenin, Critical
Remarks on the National Question)

In view of the gross distortions of Lenin’s position
on the national question inflicted by his epigones, it is necessary first of
all to point out that Lenin, as a marxist, based his attitude to support for
nationalist movements firmly on the foundations laid down by Marx and Engels in
the First International: as with all social questions, he affirmed, marxists
must examine the national question:

within its definite historical limits and not as an
abstract or a historical ‘principle’;

from the point of view of the unity of the
proletariat and the primary need to strengthen its class struggle for
socialism.

So while Lenin advocated that the proletariat should
recognise ‘the right of nations to self-determination’ – meaning the right of a
bourgeoisie to secede and establish an independent capitalist state if
necessary – he emphasised that this should only be supported where it was in
the interests of the class struggle, and that the proletariat, “while
recognising equality and equal rights to a national state values above all and
places uppermost the alliance of the proletarians of all nations, and assesses
any national demand, any national separation, from the angle of the workers’
class struggle”. (Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1914).

For Lenin, the right to self-determination was a
necessary demand in the struggle of the proletariat for democracy, along
with equal rights, universal suffrage, etc. He posed the fundamental question
as the completion of the bourgeois revolution which was still underway
in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
Nationalist movements were historically inevitable in the destruction of
feudalism by the rising bourgeoisie and the spreading of capitalist social
relations across the world. Where these bourgeois democratic nationalist
movements arose, Lenin said, marxists must support them and fight for the
maximum degree of democracy, to help sweep away feudal remnants and remove all
national oppression, in order to clear away all obstacles to the class struggle
against capitalism.

This task had a particular significance in Russia for
the Bolsheviks who were concerned to win the confidence of the masses in the
nations oppressed by the Tsarist Empire. Lenin saw ‘Great Russian’ nationalism
as the principal obstacle to democracy and to the proletarian struggle, since
it was “more feudal than bourgeois” (ibid): to deny the right of these
small nations to secede would mean, in practice, supporting the privileges of
the oppressor nation and subordinating the workers to the policy of the Great
Russian bourgeoisie and feudal landlords.

But Lenin was well aware of the dangers of the
proletariat supporting nationalist movements, because even in ‘oppressed’
countries the struggles of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie were
diametrically opposed:

the proletariat supported the right to
self-determination only in order to hasten the victory of bourgeois democracy
over feudalism and absolutism, and to secure the best, most democratic
conditions for the class struggle;

the bourgeoisie raised national demands in order to
obtain privileges for its own nation and to defend its own national
exclusiveness. For these reasons, Lenin emphasised that the proletariat’s
support for nationalism was “strictly limited to what is progressive in such
movements”; it supported the bourgeoisie “conditionally”; “only in certain
direction”.

From the point of view of the completion of the
bourgeois revolution through the struggle for democracy and against national
oppression support for the bourgeoisie of an oppressednation was only to be given where it was
actually fighting the oppressor nation: “... insofar as the bourgeoisie of the
oppressed nations stands for its own bourgeois nationalism; we stand
against. We fight against the privileges and violence of the oppressor nation,
and do not in any way condone strivings for privileges on the part of the
oppressed nation”. (ibid). In other words, bourgeois nationalist
movements were to be supported solely for their democratic content, i.e. in
their ability to contribute towards the best conditions for the class struggle
and the unity of the working class: “The bourgeois nationalism of any
oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against
oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support. At
the same time we strictly distinguish it from the tendency towards national
exclusiveness...” (ibid) original emphasis)

As for the historical limits of the struggle for
democracy and the need to raise the slogan of self-determination, Lenin in 1913
was quite specific. In western continental Europe the
epoch of bourgeois democratic revolutions was over by about 1871: “Therefore,
to seek the right to self-determination in the programmes of West-European
socialists at this time of day is to betray one’s ignorance of the ABC of Marxism”.
(ibid). But in Eastern Europe and Asia the bourgeois revolution was yet
to be completed, and “It is precisely and solely because Russia
and the neighbouring countries are passing through this period that we must
have a clause in our programme on the right of nations to self-determination” (ibid,
our emphasis).

From the beginning, the slogan of self-determination
was full of ambiguities. For example, Lenin was forced to admit that it was a negative
demand, for a right to form a separate state, for which the proletariat
could give no guarantees, and which could not be given at the
‘expense’ of another nation. His writings, limitations and exceptions, some of
them contradictory, and it was intended above all to be raised as a propagandistic
slogan by socialists in the ‘oppressing’ countries. But according to Lenin’s
strictly historical method, at root it was based on the continuing
capability of the bourgeoisie in those areas of the world where capitalism was
still expanding to struggle for democracy against feudalism and national
oppression, the inescapable conclusion being that when this period was over the
whole democratic content of these struggles disappeared, and then the only
progressive task of the proletariat was to make its own revolution against
capitalism.

LUXEMBURG’S CRITIQUE OF ‘SELF-DETERMINATION’

Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of the Bolsheviks’
acceptance of the slogan of ‘the right of nations to self-determination’ was inseparable
from the struggle of the left-wing of the social democratic parties in Western
Europe against the growing tendencies towards opportunism
and revisionism in the Second International.

By the early 20th century it was possible to see the
emerging trend in the advanced capitalist countries towards state capitalism
and imperialism, and the consequent tendency of the state machine to absorb
the permanent organisations of the workers’ movement – the trade unions and
social democratic parties. Inside the International, theoreticians like
Bernstein arose to ‘revise’ the revolutionary marxism of the International in
order to justify its accommodation to these developments in capitalism.
Luxemburg was one of the foremost theoreticians on the left who fought the
‘revisionism’ and sought to expose its root causes.

She rejected the notion of self-determination so
energetically because she saw it as a sign of dangerous ‘social-patriotic’
influences in the International; reactionary forces who disguised themselves in
socialist colours and were justified by such leading theorists as Kautsky.

The adoption by the Second International in 1896 of a
resolution recognising “the complete right of all nations to
self-determination” was in response to an attempt by the Polish Socialist Party
to obtain official support for the restoration of Polish national sovereignty.
This was rejected, but the adoption of the more general formula in Luxemburg’s
opinion avoided the underlying issues: the historical basis for the
proletariat’s support to nationalist movements and the need to combat
social-patriotism in the International.

Luxemburg began her critique by accepting the same
basic framework as Lenin, that:

the bourgeois-democratic revolution remained to be
completed in Russia, Asia and Africa;

in the interests of developing the conditions for revolution
the proletariat could not ignore nationalist movements for their democratic
content in areas of the world where capitalism was still destroying feudalism;

the proletariat was naturally opposed to all
forms of oppression, including national oppression, and was in no way
indifferent to the plight of oppressed nations.

But her first task was to defend the marxist approach
to the national question against those who, like the Polish social patriots,
used the writings of Marx in support of Polish independence to justify their
own reactionary projects for national restoration, trying hard “to transform a
particular view of Marx’s on a current issue into a genuine do dogma, timeless,
unchangeable, unaffected by historical contingencies, and subject to neither
doubt or criticism – after all, ‘Marx himself’ once said it”. This is nothing
but “an abuse of Marx’s name to sanction a tendency that in its entire spirit
was in jarring contradiction to the teachings and theory of Marxism”. (Foreword
to the Anthology ‘The Polish Question and the Socialist Movement’, 1905).

Against this fossilisation of the historical
methodology of Marxism, Luxemburg affirmed that “without a critical assessment
of the concrete historical conditions, nothing of value can be contributed to
the problem (of national oppression)”. (The Polish Question at the
International Congress, 1896), and from this standpoint, proceeded to
outline her main arguments against the slogan of self-determination:

the dependence or independence of nation states was a
question of power, not ‘rights’, and was determined by socio-economic
development andmaterial class interest;

it was a utopian slogan, since it was clearly
impossible to solve all the problems of nationality, race and ethnic
origin within the framework of capitalism;

it was a metaphysical formula which offered no
practical guidelines or solutions to the day-to-day struggle of the
proletariat, and which ignored the marxist theory of social classes and the
historical conditions of nationalist movements, Nor could it be equated with
the struggle for democratic rights as it did not represent a legal form of
existence like the right to organise, for example, in a mature bourgeois
society;

it did not differentiate the position of the
proletariat from those of the most radical bourgeois parties, nor from the
pseudo-socialist and petty- bourgeois parties. In fact it was a paraphrase of
the old slogan of bourgeois nationalism and not specifically connected with
socialism or working class politics at all;

it would lead to the fragmentation of the workers’
movement, not its unification, by leaving it up to the proletariat in each
separate oppressed nation to decide its own national position, with inevitable
contradictions and conflicts.

The majority of her arguments, which in many cases
simply repeated basic marxist positions on the state and the class nature of
society, went unanswered by Lenin. Against the idea of the proletariat
supporting self-determination, she emphasised the second part of the general
resolution adopted by the International in 1896, which called on workers on all
oppressed countries “to join the ranks of the class conscious workers of the
whole world in order to fight together with them for the defeat of
international social democracy”. (Cited on The National Question and
Autonomy, 1908). Only in this way, in the victory of international
socialism, could real self-determination be effected.

LUXEMBURG ON POLISH INDEPENDENCE

Luxemburg’s critique of self-determination was
developed with particular reference to Poland, but
the reasons she gave for rejecting support for its independence from Russia have
a general importance in clarifying the marxist approach to such questions and
the implications of change in the conditions of capitalism for the national
question as a whole. Marx and Engels originally gave their support to
Polish nationalism as part of a revolutionary strategy to defend the interests
of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Western
Europe from the Holy Alliance of feudal, absolutist Eastern
European regimes. They went so far as to call for a war against Russia and
for insurrections in Poland to
safeguard bourgeois democracy. Luxemburg pointed out that this support for
Polish nationalism was given at a time when there were no sign of revolutionary
action in Russia itself; nor indeed was there a significant proletariat in
Russia or Poland to wage a struggle against feudalism: “Not socialist theory or
tactics, but the burning political exigencies of German democracy at the bourgeois
revolution on Western Europe-determined the viewpoint that Marx, and later
Engels, adopted with respect to Russia and Poland” (Foreword).

Luxemburg’s re-affirmation of the marxist approach was
based on an analysis of the historical development of capitalism: by the last
half of the nineteenth century Poland was
experiencing: “the frantic dance of capitalism and capitalist enrichment over
the graves of the Polish nationalist movements and the Polish nobility...” (ibid),
which gave rise to a Polish proletariat and a socialist movement which from the
start took up the interests of the class struggle as opposed to nationalism.
This was matched by developments in Russia
itself where the working class began to assert its own struggle.

In Poland,
capitalist development created an opposition between national independence and
the interests of the bourgeoisie, which renounced the nationalist cause of the
old nobility in favour of the closer integration of Polish and Russia
capital, based on their need for the Russian market-which would be denied to
them if Poland were
to break away as an independent state. From this, Luxemburg concluded that the
political task of the proletariat in Poland was
not to take up the utopian and diversionary struggle for independence but to
join in a common struggle with the Russian workers against absolutism, for the
broadest democratisation in order to create the best conditions for a struggle
against Polish and Russian capital.

The revival of Marx’s 1848 support for Polish
nationalism by the Polish Socialist Party was therefore a betrayal of
socialism; a sign of the influence of reactionary nationalism within the
socialist movement which used the words of Marx and Engels while turning its
back on the proletarian alternative to national oppression: the united class
struggle, which showed itself in 1905 when the mass strikes spread from Moscow
and Petrograd to Warsaw. Nationalism in Poland had become “a vessel for all
types of reaction, a natural shield for counter-revolution”; it had become a
weapon in the hands of the national bourgeoisie who in the name of the Polish
nation attacked and murdered striking workers, organised ‘national unions’ to
counteract the class’s militancy, campaigned against ‘unpatriotic’ general
strikes, and used armed nationalist bands to assassinate socialists. Luxemburg
concluded: “Mistreated by history, the Polish national idea moved through all
stages of decline and fall. Having started its political career as a romantic,
noble insurgent, glorified by international revolution, it now ends up as a
national hooligan – a volunteer of the Black Hundreds of Russian absolutism and
imperialism”. (The National Question and Autonomy, 1908).

Through an examination of the actual changes brought
about by capitalism’s development, Luxemburg was able to wipe away the abstract
talk of ‘rights’ and ‘self-determination and most importantly to refute the
whole rationale for Lenin’s position that it was necessary to support Polish
self-determination in order to advance the cause of democracy and hasten the
erosion of feudalism. Nationalism itself was becoming a reactionary force
wherever it was faced with the threat of unified class struggle. Whatever the
specificities of Poland,
Luxemburg’s conclusions could only have a more and more generalised application
in a period when bourgeois national liberation movements were giving way to the
growing antagonism between the bourgeoisie as a class and the proletariat.

THE RISE OF IMPERIALISM AND “STATES OF CONQUEST”

Luxemburg’s rejection of self-determination and Polish
independence was inseparable from her analysis of the rise of imperialism
and its effect on national liberation struggles. Although this was a major
issue in the socialist movement in Western Europe,
Luxemburg’s comments were not taken up at all by Lenin until after the outbreak
of the first world war.

The rise of capitalist imperialism, Luxemburg argued,
rendered the whole idea of national independence obsolete; the trend was
towards “the continuous destruction of the independence of more and more new
countries and peoples, of entire continents” by a handful of leading powers.
Imperialism, by expanding the world market, destroyed any semblance of economic
independence: “this development, as well as the roots of colonial politics,
lies at the very foundations of capitalist production....colonialism will
inevitably accompany the future progress of capitalism.... only the innocuous
bourgeois apostles of ‘peace’ can believe in the possibility of today’s states
avoiding that path” (ibid). All small nations were condemned to
political impotence, and to fight to ensure their independence within
capitalism would mean, in effect, returning to an earlier stage of capitalist
development, which was clearly utopian.

This new feature of capitalism gave rise, not to
national states on the model of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions in Europe, but
states of conquest, better suited to the needs of the period. In such
conditions, national oppression became a generalised and intrinsic feature phenomenon
of capitalism, and its elimination impossible without the destruction of
imperialism itself by the socialist revolution. Lenin dismissed this analysis
of the growing dependence of small nations as irrelevant to the question of
national movements; he did not deny that imperialism or colonialism existed,
but for him political self-determination alone was the issue, and on
this question he defended Kautsky, who supported Polish restoration, against
Luxemburg.

The development of imperialism as a condition of the world
capitalist system was not yet unequivocally clear, and Luxemburg could
point only to a few ‘model’ examples – Britain, Germany, America – while she
recognised that the world market was still expanding and that capitalism had
not yet entered into its mortal crisis. But the value of her analysis was that
it examined some of the basic tendencies in capitalism and their implications
for the working class and the national question: her rejection of national
liberation struggles was based on an understanding of the changed conditions of
capitalist accumulation, and not on moral or subjective consideration.

SOME CONCLUSIONS ON THE ATTITUDE OF REVOLUTIONARIES TO
‘SELF-DETERMINATION’ IN ASCENDANT CAPITALISM

The slogan of self-determination for Lenin served a
dual purpose: as an important demand in the proletariat’s struggle within
capitalist society for democracy; and as a propaganda tactic to be utilised
against national chauvinism in the Tsarist empire. But from the beginning this
slogan contained theoretical ambiguities and practical dangers which undermined
the Bolshevik’s defence of proletarian internationalism on the eve of
capitalism’s imperialist phase:

-- as a democratic demand it was utopian. The
achievement of national independence by any faction of the bourgeoisie was
determined by relations of force, not rights, and was a product of the
evolution of the capitalist mode of production. The task of the proletariat was
first of all to maintain its autonomy as a class and defend its own interests against
the bourgeoisie.

-- the forging of proletarian unity was undoubtedly a
problem for communists, in the Tsarist empire or anywhere else, in their
struggle against the influence of bourgeois ideology. But it could only be
solved on the solid ground of the class struggle, and not by giving concessions
to nationalism, which even in the late nineteenth century was becoming a
dangerous weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Furthermore, Lenin’s use of the terms ‘oppressor’ and
‘oppressed’ nations was inadequate even in ascendant capitalism. It is true
that Luxemburg used the same terms herself in describing the rise of a handful
of ‘Great Powers’ which were dividing up the world between them, but for her
these ‘states of conquest’ were only models for a general tendency within
capitalism as a whole. One of the values of her writings on Polish nationalism
was to demonstrate that even in so-called oppressed nations, the bourgeoisie
used nationalism against the class struggle and acted as an agent of the major
imperialist powers. ‘All talk of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ nations leads
to an abstraction of the bourgeois ‘nation’which hides the fundamental class antagonism within it.

The whole strategy of ‘self-determination’ was adopted
not from Marx and Engels, but the Second International which, by the end of the
nineteenth century, was thoroughly corroded by the influence of nationalism and
reformism. Lenin’s position was shared by the centre of the social democratic
parties and on this question he supported Kautsky, the foremost ‘orthodox’
theorist, against Luxemburg and the left-wing in the International. Arguing
strongly from the point of view of the situation in Russia,
Lenin failed to show that self-determination was adopted in the first place as
a concession to nationalism: in order to go to the roots of social
democracy’s degeneration, it was therefore necessary to reject ‘the right of
nations to determination’.

The real importance of Luxemburg’s position was that
it was based on an analysis of the major tendencies in the heart of the
capitalist mode of production, and in particular the rise of imperialism in Europe, as
indicators of the nature of the whole world economy in the imperialist epoch. Lenin’s
position, in contrast, was based on the experience and needs of these countries
in backward areas of the world where the bourgeois revolution was not yet
completed, on the eve of the epoch in which it was no longer possible for the
proletariat to win reforms from capitalism, and in which nationalism could serve
no further progressive role. It was a strategy for a fast disappearing
historical period, which was incapable of serving the needs of the working
class in the new conditions of capitalist decadence.